The Pensions Regulator's CEO Lesley Titcomb is to terminate her tenure at the regulator in February 2019.

Following three years in the role, Titcomb has made the decision to depart from TPR to focus on family, friends and other interests and opportunities.

Titcomb stated: "This has been a difficult personal decision taken after extensive discussion with family and the chairman. I love working at TPR and am immensely proud of what we are achieving. But as I turn 57 next month, the end of my contract in February 2019 feels like the appropriate moment to find more time in my life for family, friends, other interests and opportunities.

"However, in the nine months before my departure we have a lot more to do. I will be here leading that work with my strong, committed TPR team.”

Ahead of her departure, she will continue to work with the executive team to drive TPR's clearer, quicker and tougher initiative forward. Since Titcomb joined the body as chief executive, TPR has assisted more than 9.6 million more people to start saving for retirement, with more than one million employers complying with their auto-enrolment duties.

Under Titcomb's leadership, TPR has also increased proactive case work by 90 per cent, using more powers and testing powers that were not previously used, set up an authorisation scheme for master trusts and redesigned a new approach to regulation to enable quicker interventions.

More specifically, Titomb and her team have secured £363m for members of the BHS pension schemes and £329m for Coats members, and have enhanced pensions for the British Steel Pension Schemes by securing over £500m from Tata Steel UK.

The search for Titcomb's successor will be led by TPR chairman Mark Boyle and will be subject to approval of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Commenting on the CEO's departure, Boyle said: “On behalf of the Board and the whole organisation I want to express our appreciation for the superb job Lesley is continuing to do as our chief executive. We respect her decision, but will be very sorry to lose her. She has been a real catalyst for change, working with energy and drive to get results and make a difference to the way we work. Lesley has strengthened our leadership team and will continue, over the coming months, to implement TPR Future, the change programme she and I instigated together which is already making us a more effective regulator.”

Following high profile pensions cases including the collapse of Carillion and the British Steel Pension Scheme and BHS schemes before this, the regulator has been largely criticised for failing to act earlier.

In a joint report on Carillion published by the Work and Pensions and the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) committees, it was said that the department's are “far from convinced” that TPR’s current leadership can effect change, and that it was “deeply concerned” with evidence it received from the regulator.

The joint committee noted the regulator’s failure to use, even a single time, its powers under section 231 of the Pensions Act 2004 that would allow it to impose a schedule of pension contributions.

In addition, the two committees have also expressed their disappointment into TPR's key performance indicator (KPI) targets for the regulation of defined benefit schemes.

Commenting on Titcomb's resignation and the recent criticism of TPR, Royal London director of policy Steve Webb commented: "This is very disappointing news. The legitimate challenges about the work of The Pensions Regulator have recently crossed the line into unnecessarily and inappropriately personal vilification of the current CEO.This is particularly unfair given that many of the events in question happened before Lesley Titcomb was in post.

"Under Lesley Titcomb’s leadership, the Regulator has achieved notable successes including a very high compliance rate with automatic enrolment and pursuing unwilling employers for hundreds of millions of pounds on behalf of members of workplace pension schemes.

"If parliament wants the best people to lead public bodies, it needs to reflect on whether those people will be willing to subject themselves to highly personal scrutiny and attack of the sort we have seen in recent months”.

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